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I grew up, as many Indians do, in an archipelago of tongues. My maternal grandfather, who was a surgeon in the city of Madras, was fluent in at least four languages and used each of them daily.

Aravind Adiga

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Aravind Adiga
Age: 50
Born: 1974
Born: October 23
Film Director
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Madras
City
Surgeon
Grew
Tongues
Cities
Surgeons
Least
Indians
Four
Languages
Archipelago
Language
Grandfather
Madras
Used
Tongue
Maternal
Many
Daily
Fluent

More quotes by Aravind Adiga

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Iqbal, that great poet, was so right. The moment you recognize what is beautiful in this world, you stop being a slave. To hell with the Naxals and their guns shipped from China. If you taught every poor boy how to paint, that would be the end of the rich in India.
Aravind Adiga
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Do you know about Hanuman, sir? He was the faithful servant of the god Rama, and we worship him in our temples because he is a shining example of how to serve your masters with absolute fidelity, love, and devotion. These are the kinds of gods they have foisted on us Mr. Jiabao. Understand, now, how hard it is for a man to win his freedom in India.
Aravind Adiga
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It's amazing. The moment you show cash, everyone knows your language.
Aravind Adiga
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In a sense, being a full-time writer is less fun because there's no office to go to anymore, there's no set routine, there's no schedule. It can be quite isolating.
Aravind Adiga
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Inconvenience in progress, work is regretted.
Aravind Adiga
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Because in this world, there is a line: on one side are the men who cannot get things done, and on the other side are the men who can. And not one in a hundred will cross that line. Will you?
Aravind Adiga
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We are made mysteries to ourselves by the Rooster Coop we are locked in.
Aravind Adiga
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I want to read Keats and Wordsworth, Hemingway, George Orwell.
Aravind Adiga
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Every book is a kind of struggle, and it's a miracle when it comes out.
Aravind Adiga
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At a time when India is going through great changes and, with China, is likely to inherit the world from the west, it is important that writers like me try to highlight the brutal injustices of society.
Aravind Adiga
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Too much of Indian writing in English, it seemed to me, consisted of middle-class people writing about other middle-class people - and a small slice of life being passed off as an authentic portrait of the country.
Aravind Adiga
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See, the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of?? Losing weight and looking like the poor.
Aravind Adiga
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Columbia University, where I went to study in 1993, insisted its undergraduates learn a foreign language, so I discovered French.
Aravind Adiga
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With their tinted windows up, the cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open a woman's hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.
Aravind Adiga
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What keeps India safe really is the heroism of millions of poor Indians who every day reject the allure of terrorism. What keeps India safe is just the courage of poor Indians, not the actions of its government.
Aravind Adiga
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When I was growing up in the south Indian city of Madras, there were only two political parties that mattered one was run by a former matinee idol, and the other was run by his former screenwriter.
Aravind Adiga
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Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad.
Aravind Adiga
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Let animals live like animals let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.
Aravind Adiga
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In terms of formal education, I may somewhat lacking. I never finished school. I am a self-taught entrepreneur, that's the best kind there is, trust me
Aravind Adiga
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An honest politician has no goodies to toss around. This limits his effectiveness profoundly, because political power in India is dispersed throughout a multi-tiered federal structure a local official who has not been paid off can sometimes stop a billion-dollar project.
Aravind Adiga